• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Building a Mini Fileserver for 5 harddrives

E

EzCo

n00b
Joined
Feb 14, 2007
Messages
11
We’re planning to build a Mini Fileserver that will hold 5 HDs. It’s small (180 x 180 x 250mm) and our plan is to make it look good on a bookshelf. Our plan is to have an exchangeable front cover. Get more pictures and follow the project over at My Uninstalled Life

We’d love to get on feedback on what we’re doing. Tips/ideas/suggestions/comments are very welcome.

- The plan is to fit a mini-ITX board and run it as a NAS (Windows, FreeNAS, Linux…). One problem is the possibility to actually be able to configure it with 5 HDs since there are very few mini-ITX boards that can handle that (possible wit EPIA EN which has 2 x IDE and 2 x SATA). One thought is to be able to fit a risercard + RAID controller in next prototype. Can anyone recommend a 5+ SATA controller card?
- Cooling is also an concern even though or prototype fitted with 5 HDs doesn’t break the recommended limits. Right now we’re using a very silent Scythe 120mm fan. We might need to switch it for a more powerful, still silent, model. Any suggestions?
- Another concern are the small PSU’s, usually only 80/120W but our prototype can run fully fitted with a 120W PSU. If we run out of power, there are 220W models at Qform. Anyone know of any else?

Here are some early pictures of the first prototype from the drawing table:
378320472_062eb81bfc.jpg


On the second prototype, we decided to be able to exchange frontplate so we changed the look a bit:
378320474_5d51796f2b.jpg


Here’s some real photo of the first prototype we made:
378321245_38efc86305.jpg


391218381_1f93b978e0.jpg


It will be possible to swap frontplate. Here are two examples:
390082799_10b98d24cf.jpg


391218374_a3f5b424d3.jpg
 
holy crap! that looks awesome!



one question tho, do all those cables in front of the fan block airflow much?
 
well it looks good but actually getting 5 drives with gigbyte lan in that box w/ cooling wont be easy...gl
 
Right now our prototype is running with 5 HDs and a EPIA EN motherboard (with Gigabit LAN) and none of the HDs are above 39C.

However, we think that switching to only SATA will make a big difference since those PATA cable stop a lot of airflow. And the fan is the most silent and this model doesn't move as much air as the "almost-as-silent" fan so it will be interesting to see if we notice any difference if we move to the more efficient fan, but still keeping the noise down. However, it's the HDs that causes the noise here - not the fan :)

And also, the motherboard is a fan-less one. If we would move to a mobo with FAN - we think the CPU temp would go down a bit aswell.
 
must...have...one....NOW! :eek:

I love that design, soo many hard drives in such a small space.
 
You did a good job. I'm just curious as to why you didn't just take a shuttle and stuff 5 drives in there?
 
Thanks for all your tips. I've thought of a Shuttle aswell but I simply wanted a low-voltage Mini-ITX server and when I realized we had the possibility to make one - why not! We have to do something during the dark winters up here in northern Scandinavia :)

We just made a new prototype with another “flame” front. The one below that one is without a front. What do you think?

414026647_b609eb8183.jpg

414026648_917f73534c.jpg


What is left is the “cage” for the harddrives which we will make soon. We wanted to try the concept of having a separated cage that you install the HDs in because with the design prior to this – it wasn’t easy to remove a harddrive in the middle without detaching several other HDs. Hopefully, this will make it easier. However, we’re still investigating how we could solve this for the next prototype so if you have any ideas – let us know.

We have also thought of some kind of hotswap such as this or this. However, we’re wondering if it would be easy for us to design it for this and also these ones cost pretty much.

We’d love to get some feedback.

For more pictures, check out:
http://www.myuninstalledlife.com/new-prototype-manufactured
 
w1retap said:
I don't know if you guys have seen these mobo's, but they

If you just wanted to run FreeNAS or another small OS, an IDE flash memory module would seem ideal. They can be found at the bottom of the page here..
http://mini-itx.com/store/?c=16#2609
Click to expand...

hate to hijack, but thanks for the link. never seen these before, going to have to look for a us distributer, would work great for something like a low power server box.
 
Thanks for all those hardware recommendations!

Isn't there some SATA controller cards with 6-8 ports that are cheaper? I understand that RAID-cards might cost some $100+ but an "ordinary" SATA-controller - wouldn't that go for $50 or less? There seems to be some 4 x SATA controllers for $20 so I don't think it would cost them that much to add another 2 other ports but I guess they see that if you have 6 drives - you have the money to buy a controller for it :). But I guess you could use the mobo connectors and then just add a controller adding up to 5 harddrives in total.
 
People asked about the heat and temperatures when we squeeze so much stuff in such a small box. Now we’ve done some heavy testing!

Here are two final temperatures after running some tests for an hour during harddrive stress.
432458710_32547dad1c.jpg


432458710_32547dad1c.jpg


If you look at the manufactures specifications (Examples: Samsung=60C, IBM=55C, WD=55C, VIA=50C), we didn’t cross any of the recommended limits. However, we’re pretty close. Do remember that this was the most silent, and therefore not the most efficient, fan we could find. There are some very quiet fans out there that will be able to move more air that would probably lower the temperature even more. One reason why the case keeps the harddrives pretty cool is because there are about 5-10mm’s between the harddrives which lets the airflow through.

If anyone has any suggestions for a good 120mm fan except for the Scythe S-FDB one we’re using now – please let us know!

Here’s the complete posts with more details how we ran the tests:
http://www.myuninstalledlife.com/temperatures-in-the-mini-fileserver
 
What about putting in a 3x 5.25" 5HD swap bay, and have your interesting case covers over the front? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817995001 Or maybe make a 3x 5.25" slot in the front and default to a HD rack that holds the 5 drives with an option for the hotswap bay?

As for the Sata controller card, this might suit... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816110002 it's definately cheap enough atm, only $40. Might need to try one out to make sure it'll suit your needs though.

As for a fan, I'm happy with the Noctua NF-S12-1200 120MM Ultra Quiet Cooling Fan 1200RPM 56CFM 17DBA pair I got for my HTPC in an Antec NSK2400 case. They're a little wierd looking, but there's a bunch of science behind the fan blade's shapes... Short story is they push air better at low fan speeds than the more typical "raked" fan blade profile does.
 
I reccomend notebook SATA drives. Your going to save both space and noise, even though it comes at a slightly higher price.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top